You wouldn’t know it from the posts so far – you probably think I only eat pizza – but my favorite food is Asian. I can’t narrow it down any more than that because I love all types of Asian food, which is good new for me because many Asian recipes are naturally vegan or very easy to veganize. I made Pad Thai for lunch today. Good news for you: Pad Thai is very quick and easy to make! The only thing that takes any time is soaking the noodles. But you can even cheat at that and cook them, in which case preparing the entire meal takes maybe 20 minutes.

When making a veggie Pad Thai, you can throw whatever veggies you want in. Unlike pizza, which I like simple, I like to put a lot of veggies in my noodles, which makes them more interesting and nutritious.

Pad Thai

This recipe makes about 4 servings.

1/2 package ban pho (rice noodles; available at any Asian grocer)

Sauce ingredients

These amounts are all approximations; mix to your own taste.

1/3 cup soy sauce or vegan “fish” sauce
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 Tbsp tamarind concentrate
1/4 – 1 tsp red pepper flakes

Other ingredients

Other than the shallots, all of the veggies are optional and/or can be substituted with other veggies of your liking.

2 shallots, chopped
1 carrot, julienned
1/4 cup cubed tofu (you can use fresh extra-firm tofu, pre-fried tofu, or the kind that comes pressed)
1/2 red pepper, chopped
2 Tbsp garlic chives (I used regular chives today because that’s what I had)
1 cup bean sprouts

Garnishes

crushed peanuts
quartered limes (I didn’t have any today and used a lemon instead)
chopped cilantro
additional red pepper flakes

First, soak your rice noodles in some water; the warmer the water, the faster they will soften. You want them to soften to just barely al dente, which will probably take 30-45 minutes. I got tired of waiting after half an hour (I was starving) and turned the burner on for about 5 minutes. The water never made it to a boil, but the noodles softened quickly. Do NOT overcook them. Drain them when they are ready.

This is what they look like as they are soaking:

While the noodles are soaking, prepare the sauce. I put some soy sauce in the photograph (Vietnamese soy sauce is all I had; I guess Thai soy sauce would have been better), but I actually used some mock fish sauce I made from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, because I had it leftover from an earlier experiment. Bittman’s recipe isn’t bad, but I’ve always just used soy sauce in the past, so don’t feel like you need to go out of your way to make fake fish sauce. Soy sauce is the normal vegetarian sub. Whisk all of the sauce ingredients together. I’m heavy-handed with the red pepper flakes because my husband and I both like everything super spicy, but since you can garnish with extra later, it’s much better to use too little in the sauce.

Next prep all your veggies. You may have noticed the humongous carrot I have in the photo. I buy these huge carrots at the Asian grocery store because they are excellent for using on my mandolin, but if you don’t have a mandolin and/or don’t have bizzarely huge carrots, just chop it up into matchsticks with a knife.

Here are all of my veggies, prepped and ready to go. It is essential that you completely prep everything before you start cooking because the cooking goes extremely quickly.

Prepare your garnishes before you do the cooking as well. Crush or chop the peanuts. I just stick them in a mortar and pestle (I’m using a molcajete here because they don’t jump out of it.)

As previously discussed, I kill cilantro plants and didn’t have any fresh on hand. If you do, chop it up now. I used the frozen cilantro I got at Trader Joe’s, which I actually threw in the wok. But usually you would just toss the fresh leaves with the noodles.

Heat your wok up pretty hot. Now, I try to be conscious of the fact that not everyone has as many kitchen toys as I do and suggest alternatives where I can, but I’m not sure you can substitute anything for a wok when making Pad Thai. An ordinary frying pan is probably just not large enough. If it’s all you have, you may have to make one serving at a time. Even if you have a wok, you are only supposed to make two servings of Pad Thai at a time, although I got away with doing all four servings at once. The good news is woks are one of the few things that you don’t have to spend a lot of money on to get a higher quality. I authorize you to buy the cheapest wok you can find. Do NOT buy a non-stick wok. I don’t even know why such a thing exists. Not only are well-seasoned woks naturally non-stick, but woks are made for very fast cooking at very high temperatures – much higher than you can safely heat any non-stick coating. Non-stick woks are completely useless and in fact, dangerous. Non-stick woks sort of make me angry.

OK, enough lecturing. When your wok is hot, add some peanut oil. Pad Thai is generally fairly greasy, but I use only enough oil to get by. Add the shallots and stir-fry for a minute or two.

Add the remaining veggies (except the bean sprouts), one by one, beginning with those that take the longest to cook and finishing with the ones that take the least time, stir-frying for 30 seconds to a minute between additions. The reason for staggering the addition of veggies to a wok is not just because some take longer than others, but because every time you add something to the wok, it brings the temperature of the wok down, and you want the wok to remain very hot. So you are just adding a little bit at a time to allow the wok to recover temperature-wise. Don’t be tempted to dump a bunch of stuff in at once. I ordered my veggies like this: carrots, tofu, peppers, chives.

Since I was using frozen cilantro, I threw it in with the last of the veggies. After the last addition of veggies, dump the noodles in. As I said before, you shouldn’t put more than two servings of noodles in the wok at a time, so ideally you would only have been putting half the veggies in, and now adding half the noodles. Don’t crowd the wok. Mix everything up.

Now add the sauce and mix well. Finally add the bean sprouts and toss.

To serve, place a serving of noodles on a plate with a lime (or lemon if you must) wedge. Top with cilantro leaves and crushed peanuts. Pass additional chili flakes and peanuts around the table so others can spice to their tastes.

Enjoy! Pad Thai is actually a very quick meal once you know how to do it; it’s all prep time. If you buy pre-prepped veggies, or if you chopped extra veggies for a meal earlier in the week, and if you cook instead of soaking the noodles, you could have this ready in ten minutes!

By the way, Chez Pim has a very thorough tutorial on making Pad Thai, which I definitely recommend for further reading.

I am the luckiest girl in the world. Is it because I have the prettiest cat in the world?

No, although that is certainly one of the perks of being me. (Okay, I admit that is a completely gratuitous picture of my cat, but being better behaved than Tigger – and therefore not always jumping on the counter – Brachtune felt left out of the blog.) The reason I am the luckiest girl in the world is my husband actually requests Brussels sprouts for dinner! Often! This is good news for me because I love Brussels sprouts; I may have been the only child in America to like them as a kid. Mark likes Brussels sprouts so much that if he gets a hankering for them, he will drive to the store and buy them – and he’s not a fan of going to the grocery store.

On a recent visit to our hometown of Baltimore, a friend took us to his neighborhood bar, which was not only a really cool place, but apparently has the surprising reputation of making amazing Brussels sprouts, of all things. Mark ordered the Brussels sprouts, of course, and boy, they were good! Soon afterward – I believe it was the next night, in fact – Mark wanted some more of the balsamic sprouts, so I set about recreating the recipe. Tonight I shall share it with you, although it’s so simple I barely consider it a recipe. Here’s all you need:

That’s Brussels sprouts, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and salt. About the balsamic vinegar: if you don’t wince at the price tag, you probably aren’t buying real balsamic vinegar. When I first cooked with balsamic vinegar, I couldn’t figure out why the results were so…not good. It turns out the stuff I had purchased in the grocery store for three or four dollars doesn’t even approach being real balsamic vinegar. Real balsamic vinegar will usually put you back at least $100. This Fini stuff, which I got at Whole Foods, for I think about $12, has only been aged for 12 months, which is a few years short of the really good stuff, but it’s pretty good. Mark would probably hesitate to request Brussels sprouts as often as he does if he knew I was coating them in $$$, so I’m happy with the Fini, although I WILL buy a good balsamic vinegar when I have the chance. But to your recipe:

Brussels Sprouts Roasted in Balsamic Vinegar and Olive Oil

1 pound Brussels sprouts
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
finishing salt, to taste (I use Maldon and love it.)

Preheat oven to 400 F. Wash your Brussels sprouts, trim the ends if necessary (or remove from the stalk if you were lucky enough to buy them that way), remove any unsightly layers, and then cut in half lengthwise. If the sprouts are flatter in one direction than the other, cut so they are wide, not tall, as shown:

Place the oil and vinegar in a small bowl:

(This photo is here just because I think it’s neat.)

Then emulsify by whisking:

Put some of the Brussels sprouts in the bowl and use your hands to mix them up with the oil and vinegar, thoroughly coating each sprout half:

If you are fortunate to have a Brussels sprouts fiend for a husband, as I am, watch out, as he may try to eat the bowl:

Arrange in a single layer, cut side down, on a baking sheet or pan:

Sprinkle with the salt:

Roast for about 20 to 25 minutes. You want them to be dark, almost black in places, but you also don’t want to cook them until the point of mushiness.

Tonight I served them with the Risotto with Broccoli Rabe and White Beans from Lorna Sass’s Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure, although I used asparagus instead of broccoli rabe.

These Brussels sprouts are so good your spouse or kids will be piling their plates high!

I make my own soy milk and tofu, the former because commercial brands are too sweet and the latter just because it’s fun. When I tell people I make my own soy milk and tofu, I often get strange looks as if it had never even occurred to the person that tofu can come from any source other than a plastic tub in the refrigerated section of the grocery store. Some people aren’t even sure what tofu is made of. Tofu is made from soy beans! The only ingredients in tofu are soy beans, water, and a small amount of coagulant, which I’ll get into later.

Before I start my tutorials on making soy milk and tofu, I’d like to say that much of what I know about making these items comes from Maki’s tutorial on Just Hungry, which is pretty much the definitive article on the subject, and this post on Bryanna Clark Grogan’s (one of my favorite cookbook authors) site. I can’t hope to improve on either of these tutorials, and I recommend you read both of them thoroughly because I’m pretty lazy about it and you’re going to get much better information from them. But this is something I do every week and I thought I’d share it with you in the hopes of making you realize neither process is nearly as complicated as I bet you think it is.

A quick word about electric soy milk makers: if you have a decent blender, you don’t need one. I have to admit that after the first couple of times I made soy milk, I managed to squirt okara all over my face, body, and kitchen, and – looking like an actress in a really bad porno – plaintively informed my husband I needed a soy milk maker. But then I figured out how to keep the okara in the bag and off my face, and I now think soy milk makers are ridiculous. And this from someone with a serious kitchen appliance addiction.

A little terminology for you: okara is the word for the mashed up soy beans that remain after you have squeezed out all the “milk”.

In this post, I’ll show you how to make soy milk, which is the first step in making tofu. I’ll save the tofu part for a later post so I don’t overwhelm you. To make soy milk, you need dried soy beans, a large pot, another large pot or a large bowl, a colander or large strainer, and an “okara bag”. An “okara bag” is just a piece of muslin folded in half and stitched on two sides, leaving one side open and forming a bag. You want to make it large enough that you can fold the edges over your pot or bowl; see the photos below. You can get muslin at any fabric store and it is very cheap. Some people use cheesecloth instead of muslin, but I don’t recommend this because it’s too easy for the okara squirt out when you are pressing it later, and although there are heavy kinds of cheesecloth they say are re-usable, it just seems very messy to me.

You can make as much or as little soy milk as you like at a time. I’ll assume here that you want to make about 2 quarts, because that’s how much I make to make tofu. But for drinking purposes, I halve this recipe and just make one quart because that’s all I need. If you make double this recipe, though, you’ll need to use a large stock pot to cook the soy milk: it expands a lot, so you need extra room.

So to make about 2 quarts of soy milk, put 8 ounces of dried soy beans into a bowl and cover with a lot of water. The soy beans will double in size, so put them in a big enough bowl and use enough water. Let them soak for about 8 hours. Here are my soaked soy beans:

The first few times you make soy milk, you will want to follow the directions precisely, what with the weighing and the measuring. Later, you may find shortcuts, as I have. For example, I noticed that my little fist grabs almost exactly one ounce of soy beans, and I often just grab 8 fistfuls of soy beans and call it a day. See, I’m a very imprecise cook. I have no right to be explaining how to do things to other people!

After soaking, drain the soy beans and put half of them into a blender. Measure 8 cups of water and put into a large pot over medium heat. When changing the yield on this recipe, this is easy to remember: one cup of water for every ounce of dried soy beans. That’s all you need to know! Allow the water to come up to temperature as you blend the soy beans. Add enough water to the blender to cover the soy beans by about an inch or two. The more water, the easier time your blender will have, so be generous:

Now blend, blend, blend! And blend some more. You want to make a very smooth mixture, that looks like this (or a little thicker, I don’t know why that looks so thin):

Pour the mixture into your large pot, and repeat with the remaining soy beans. You should have enough room in the pot for the contents to double, as it may swell up quite a bit. Simmer this mixture over medium heat for about 20 minutes. When it begins to swell, it’s ready, and you want to be watching it because when it starts to swell, it will very quickly swell higher than you expect, quite possibly over the sides of the pot if you aren’t careful. Ask me how I know this.

While the mixture is simmering, get another pot or a large bowl ready. Place your strainer or colander into it, and then line the colander with your “okara bag”, like this, except don’t pull up the one side as I did here so you could see the arrangement:

Carefully (because it’s hot), pour the soy bean mixture into the lined colander, and let it sit for a moment or two as the liquid slowly drains down into the pot or bowl:

Now here’s the part that caused me so many problems in the beginning. You want to squeeze all of the liquid out of the bag, making the contents – the okara – as dry as possible. At least that’s what I read, and for some reason I got it in my head that I had to REALLY squeeze on that bag so incredibly tightly that the okara came shooting through the weave of the fabric…and onto my face. What I would do is pick the bag up out of the colander, spin it around to seal it at the top, and, wearing gloves because it was hot, squeeze and twist as if my life depended on it, bent on draining every last drop of milk out of that bag. It’s a good thing I milk soy beans and not cows. But then I decided to just relax and MOSTLY get the liquid out of the bag by just pressing it with a potato masher against the colander and if the okara didn’t end up quite as dry, well, too bad. And what do you know, I no longer ended up with white stuff all over myself and I got just as much milk out of the bag anyway. The lesson here is to NOT take all your frustrations out on the okara bag and squeeze or press it just enough.

And now guess what! You’re done! Woo! Lift the colander out of the bowl or pot and YOU HAVE SOY MILK! If you are making tofu, you are ready to move on to the next step (coming soon). If you plan to drink this soy milk, or use it on cereal, you have the option of adding sugar and/or flavoring. I just add a bit of sugar, maybe 2 Tbsp per quart (which would be 1/4 cup if you used the measurements I’ve used here), but I don’t like it very sweet and if you are used to commercial soy milk, you may find you need to wean yourself from their excessive use of sugar. As I read somewhere, don’t be afraid to add sugar in any amount, because chances are you still aren’t adding as much as the commercial brands do!

I also often use maple syrup instead of sugar. You can add a pinch of salt if you like. If you like vanilla flavored, add that, or cocoa for chocolate milk.

The finished product (in a lovely glass pitcher I got from King Arthur Flour…have I mentioned my problem with that place? But seriously, it tastes better stored in glass than in plastic.):

I know I’ve been very wordy here, but once you do this a couple of times, it takes next to no effort. If I use the last of my soy milk on my cereal in the morning, I throw my four fistfuls of soy beans into a bowl, cover with water, and head out to work. When I get home, I just whip up the soy milk at the same time I’m making dinner. The only part that requires any thinking is making sure the pot it’s in doesn’t boil over, and since I’m right there working on dinner, that’s no problem.

And a final word about okara: don’t throw it away! You are supposed to eat that too! You’re supposed to be able to add it to all sorts of baked goods, although honestly, I haven’t had much success doing so. It seems to make baked goods leaden. I’m probably doing something wrong though. The best thing to do with okara is make Susan V’s Okara “Crab” Cakes. (By the way, Susan’s Fat-Free Vegan blog is one of the best food blogs out there and one of the inspirations for this blog.) The truth of the matter is I usually throw my okara away…and feel really guilty about it. I end up with a lot of it though. If nothing else, I should be composting it, but I haven’t started composting yet. So I challenge you to outdo me and use your okara more wisely. I really should be getting twice as much use out of my soy beans and saving even more money. If you know of any great uses for okara, please share!